Jupiter and Venus in conjunction
Today was not a good day for me. In my day job, I work as a systems administrator for a team of software developers, and my Monday started off with some massive system failures. The team have a shipping deadline in less than a week, and there is still a significant amount of testing to complete. The pressure was on, and I only left my office at 6:30 pm. So why am I in such a good mood? Two reasons: We had clear skies, and I was on the road at the right time to be able to see the conjunction of Jupiter and Venus that everybody’s been talking about. I looked west and there they were, with Jupiter right on top of glamorous Venus (which, frankly, is pretty much in character for them – the mythological Venus relished her promiscuous lifestyle, and Jupiter was no slouch with the ladies either). Incidentally, I noticed Mars perched on the opposite side of the sky, probably watching with interest…
In case all this innuendo is clouding the facts, a planetary conjunction is when two planets appear to be at their closest point to each other, from our viewpoint on Earth. Many movies which use ancient legends as a plot point will refer to “the planets coming into alignment”, and will often have some cheesy animation showing them all lined up like snooker balls. A planetary conjunction is the real life version of what they’re referring to, and astrologers do actually make a big deal of this sort of thing. Of course, the only real significance is in our heads – there’s something beautiful and compelling about seeing two bright points of light maneuvering close to each other in our night skies, even if it takes them weeks or months to get there. Since this particular conjunction will still be worth catching for another day or two, I highly recommend that you head outside tomorrow night and look in a roughly western direction shortly after sunset. I don’t need to give any further directions, because anybody with the gifts of sight and cloudless skies will immediately notice the two extremely bright stars so close together that you can hide them both behind a single fist at arms length. Seriously, go outside and have a look. It’s too beautiful to miss.
